parkinson's disease: c/d?

so sorry f hazel that's a horrible thing for a mother & child to go through <3

LL i'm sorry for my last comment. fwiw i wouldn't want any friend of mine to worry about being a "vibesuck" under any circumstances, and certainly not in this case. but sorry for framing this as somebody's fault, your friends probably feel the same way.

I was a sucky or feeble default friend in this regard all during high school, when two of my classmates' family home was a hip gathering place: their Mom was cool but no fool; their Dad seemed deflated, just sat around, and we somehow knew that he was a long-time alcoholic, maybe depressive as well, but as far as I could tell (not that I ever asked any of our other friends, 'til long after), nobody ever brought it up. Once his teen daughter asked him, "What do you think of this song, Daddy?" "Pretty good, Honey." "Well, I think--" That was the only time I can recall him speaking, and I think I was startled to think that they had any kind of conversation.
(I don't know which of us brought it up, but years later, his wife gave me some backstory, leading up to the phase I'd seen/not seen. )
When he finally died, I wrote a letter to his son, saying I was sorry in the first sentence, and immediately changing the subject.
Back in high school (and yeah, for quite a while after), there was a general thing: none of us could talk about our families, because almost everybody else's seemed so Normal. A number of Daddies were still in the prime time of working x drinking.

Oh, and also, a few years after high school, he moved into a trailer park, living by himself---I don't know if he got harder to live with, and/or wanted the isolation. I still thought about him from time to time, but still---never brought him up, however much other perspectives changed, and friendships with his family members continued.

it impacts your life in such myriad ways. feeling crushing guilt any time I talk about how it makes me feel compared to what my mom went through, the reflexive impulse to project normalcy at all times so people see your relative as a person and not a disease, and how isolating it is to be successful doing that. and then, like LL says, when you finally do need to talk about it... you don't even know how to begin. even typing these couple paragraphs has just about wrecked me for the day but I'd hate to think anyone going through it thinks they're doing anything wrong or shouldn't be overwhelmed.

otm, thank you sharing in spite of it being a slog. i am trying to do the same to varying degrees of success <3